Pistorius and Reeva Steenkamp: Supreme Court finds him guilty of killing girlfriend

South Africa’s Supreme Court has found the Blade runner Oscar Pistorius  guilty of the murder of  his girl friend, Reeva Steenkamp.

Justice Eric Leach, who read the unanimous judgment of five justices today said the culpable homicide verdict given by Justice Thokozile Masipa has been set aside.

Pistorius must return to the Pretoria high court for a new sentence, appropriate for a murder offence.

In the original trial Judge Masipa, was said to have misapplied an obsucre legal principle of dolus eventualis to find Pistorius not guilty of murder, but culpable homicide.

The legal principle hinges on whether an accused did foresee the outcome of his actions, rather than whether they should have. In this case, Masipa accepted Pistorius’ argument that he did not think his actions would lead to the death of the person behind the door. But in deciding that a reasonable person should have foreseen that, she did find him guilty of culpable homicide.

But in reviewing the case he described “a human tragedy of Shakespearean proportions”, Justice Leach said it was not disputable that Pistorius shot his girlfriend through the door four times.

He said Masipa’s verdict was premised upon an acceptance that Pistorius did not think Steenkamp was in the toilet and so he did not foresee that his actions could cause her death.

“A perpetrator does not need to know the identity of his victim,” he said.

“The key thing is that the perpetrator knows his actions could kill that person, whoever it is.”

According to the justices, the trial court misdirected itself on this point of law.

Justice Leach cited a key evidence during the trial that Justice Masipa ignored: the evidence of the ballistics expert, Captain Mangena.

Mangena had said the toilet cubicle where Pistorius shot his girlfriend to death was extremely small and the shooter ought to have known that all the shots fired through the door would have struck the person behind it. There would have been nowhere for Steenkamp to hide.

The failure to take into account all this evidence amounts to a failure in law, Justice Leach said.

The Supreme Court thus ordered the case to be returned to Justice Masipa, to give the appropriate punishment.

June Steenkamp, mother of the murdered girl, Reeva, was in court. But Pistorius and family were not there.

Oscar Pistorius was accused of killing his girlfriend on Valentine’s day in 2013.

Last year, Judge Masipa gave Pistorius a five-year jail sentence for “culpable homicide” of Steenkamp, but South African prosecutors argued that the “Blade Runner” should have been convicted of murder, a position that was upheld by the Supreme court today.